1. Field
The present disclosure relates to computer software, and, more particularly, computer software monitoring a user's use of a computer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Corporations and other organizations have a need to monitor the use of their computer facilities to guard against abuse such as the use of the computer facilities for private (non-corporate) purposes, unlawful purposes, harassment, malicious purposes, and other nefarious activity. An informal survey of system administrators at a number of U.S. corporations indicated that the system administrators primarily rely upon control of access to the Internet to police the computers and networks under their purview. For example, most of the system administrators stated that they block ports using a firewall of one kind or another,
A limited level of monitoring is sometime employed in policing of computers and networks. For example, some of the system administrators stated that they monitor network or computer content, but primarily as traps of browser addresses and text traffic through a port. Traffic volume between nodes may be monitored, but the content of the traffic is not monitored.
However, control of access to the Internet as well as the limited monitoring described above is generally ineffective in detecting computer abuse. Notwithstanding access control and monitoring, the system administrators surveyed detected many instances of computer abuse by accidental discovery. For example, an employee was discovered to be running a personal eBay store on company time, a programmer was found to be writing computer games while ostensibly on corporate time, and an employee was found to be harassing fellow employees using corporate computers over corporate networks.
Accordingly, for at least the above reasons, there is a need for methods, systems, and compositions of matter for monitoring the use of computers in order to detect abuse.